Jake Gyllenhaal stopped by The Tonight Show on Monday and revealed that he once auditioned for a part in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. Believe it or not the actor was once up for the role of Frodo, but unfortunately royally bombed the audition.
“I got a call from like 14 agents,” Gyllenhaal told Jimmy Fallon. “They were all so excited, and when agents are excited, it’s intense. So they were like, ‘Oh guess what? They’re making The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson’s making it, it’s gonna be three movies over three-and-a-half years, and when they said they need a hobbit, we thought, ‘Jake!’”
Gyllenhaal then explained that he wasn’t prepared for the audition, mostly because he wasn’t expecting for the first part to be stage direction driven with no lines to read. He goes on to describe how he was told to open a box, find a ring inside, and react. “I didn’t really do it, because I didn’t understand, there were no lines,” he said. And, apparently things got even worse when he had to read lines.
“Then I had a scene with lines, and everyone has a British accent in that, but I didn’t do an accent, and Peter Jackson literally turned to me like, ‘You are the worst actor that I have ever seen,’” Gyllenhaal recalled. “He was like, ‘Did anyone tell you you were supposed to do an accent?’ I was like, ‘No.’ He was like, ‘Fire your agents.’”
Watch the full clip below:
